TOKYO, Japan (Reuters) -- Japan's Toshiba Corp said on Tuesday that Guinness World Records had certified its stamp-sized hard disk drives (HDDs) as the smallest in the world.
The electronics conglomerate's 0.85-inch HDDs, unveiled in January, have storage capacity of up to four gigabytes and will be used in products such as cell phones and digital camcorders.
Toshiba, whose 1.8-inch HDDs are used in Apple Computer Inc's hot-selling iPod digital music players, for example, aims to start producing the 0.85-inch HDDs by the end of 2004
The Guinness Book of World Records has credited Toshiba with creating the world's smallest hard drive. These hard drives are less than one inch wide--about the size of a postage stamp--yet can store up to 4 GB. Only 7 years ago 4 GB hard drives were common in desktop computers. Toshiba unveiled these diminutive devices in January, and expects to begin producing them by the end of 2004. On the other end of the spectrum, 400 GB hard drives are now available. For much of the 1990s disk drive capacities were doubling every year. The rate of increase has slowed substantially, but hard drives are still doubling in capacity every other year, essentially mirroring Moore's Law. This trend should continue for at least the next several years, resulting in terabyte desktop hard drives and 20 GB microdrives by the end of the decade. Only 50 years ago IBM introduced the first hard drive, called RAMAC. RAMAC was a contraption the size of several washing machines, and was capable of storing 5 MB. Toshiba's microdrive is less than 1/1000 the size of RAMAC, yet can store almost 1,000 times as much information
The electronics conglomerate's 0.85-inch HDDs, unveiled in January, have storage capacity of up to four gigabytes and will be used in products such as cell phones and digital camcorders.
Toshiba, whose 1.8-inch HDDs are used in Apple Computer Inc's hot-selling iPod digital music players, for example, aims to start producing the 0.85-inch HDDs by the end of 2004
The Guinness Book of World Records has credited Toshiba with creating the world's smallest hard drive. These hard drives are less than one inch wide--about the size of a postage stamp--yet can store up to 4 GB. Only 7 years ago 4 GB hard drives were common in desktop computers. Toshiba unveiled these diminutive devices in January, and expects to begin producing them by the end of 2004. On the other end of the spectrum, 400 GB hard drives are now available. For much of the 1990s disk drive capacities were doubling every year. The rate of increase has slowed substantially, but hard drives are still doubling in capacity every other year, essentially mirroring Moore's Law. This trend should continue for at least the next several years, resulting in terabyte desktop hard drives and 20 GB microdrives by the end of the decade. Only 50 years ago IBM introduced the first hard drive, called RAMAC. RAMAC was a contraption the size of several washing machines, and was capable of storing 5 MB. Toshiba's microdrive is less than 1/1000 the size of RAMAC, yet can store almost 1,000 times as much information
